Retractions as political statement

From Retraction Watch, a story about a retraction is really a story about Nature’s failure to publish a refutation:

Knowing that Nature had an explicit editorial policy to publish, in some form, work which refutes an important conclusion of any paper which appears in its pages, we submitted our findings describing the transgenic mice and our failure to replicate the work from Bellgrau et al. to Nature. We received two very positive reviews, but based on a third, very negative one, from Bellgrau et al., the editors decided not to publish our findings as a letter or as correspondence.

Although the authors were able to publish their work in another journal, they still wanted Nature to acknowledge the new evidence.  Eventually they decided to retract a ‘News and Views’ piece they’d published in Nature lauding the original finding by Bellgrau et al.

I added “I regret having to take this course, but as Naturerefuses to abide by its own ethical policy, namely to “publish refutations of any important conclusion that appears in its pages,” I am left with no other option.

Thankfully,Naturedid agree to publish the retraction, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, they were unhappy with the wording. The retraction included just two sentences.

…

The retraction was published in 1998, and has attracted 16 citations of its own. However, of the 976 citations of the Bellgrau et al. paper, about 700 were subsequent to publication of the retraction, so it’s clear many remain unaware that its findings are questionable. Clearly, the processes that allow the scientific record to self-correct can be improved, not least by Nature.

I’m not sure how it’s a good idea to let the original authors (in this case Bellgrau et al) be veto-holding members of the review process.

It would be interesting if journals were required to also publish all attempted replications of original work first published in their pages.  Given the editorial burden that’s not really fair to the journals, but it would be great for the robustness and quality of the literature at large.